Arvind Mahankali wins Scripps National Spelling Bee
Indian-American 13-year-old takes out Scripps title and continues Indian dominance of contest
After two close calls, Arvind Mahankali, 13, has won in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
The boy from Bayside Hills, New York, correctly spelled knaidel, the word for a small mass of leavened dough, to win the 86th US national spelling bee on Thursday night.
The German curse has turned into a German blessing
The bee tested brain power, composure and knowledge of vocabulary.
Mahankali finished third in both 2011 and last year, and both times was eliminated on German-derived words. This time, he got one German word in the finals, and the winning word was from German-derived Yiddish, eliciting groans and laughter from the crowd. He spelled both with ease.
"The German curse has turned into a German blessing," he said.
He outlasted 11 other finalists, all but one of whom had been to the National Spelling Bee before, in nearly 21/2 hours of tense competition that was televised nationally. In one round, all nine participants spelled their words correctly.
When he was announced as the winner, Mahankali looked upward at the confetti falling upon him and cracked his knuckles, his signature gesture during his appearances.
He takes home US$30,000 in cash and prizes and a huge cup-shaped trophy.
The skinny teenager, clad in a white polo shirt and with wire-rimmed glasses pushed down his nose, was joined on stage at the Washington-area hall by his parents and his beaming younger brother.
An aspiring physicist who admires Albert Einstein, Mahankali said he would spend more time studying physics this summer now that he has "retired" from the spelling bee.
He becomes the sixth consecutive Indian-American winner and the 11th in the past 15 years, an astounding run that began in 1999 when Nupur Lala captured the title in 1999 and was later featured in the documentary .
Mahankali's family is from Hyderabad in southern India, and relatives who live there were watching live on television.
"At home, my dad used to chant Telegu [language] poems from forward to backward and backward to forward, that kind of thing," said Mahankali's father, Srinivas. "So language affinity, we value language a lot. And I love language."
Pranav Sivakumar, 13, who like Arvind rarely appeared flustered on stage, finished second. The 13-year-old from Illinois, was tripped up by cyanophycean, the word for a blue-green alga. Sriram Hathwar, 13, of New York, finished third, and Amber Born, 14, of Massachusetts, was fourth.
The field was cut from 42 semifinalists, with spellers advancing based on a formula that combined their scores from a computerised spelling and vocabulary test with their performance in two on-stage rounds.
